Head Case: Season 1, Vol. 1

Meet Dr. Elizabeth Goode, Ph. D (Alexandra Wentworth), a brash and judgmental therapist who uses her own unconventional methods of therapy to treat the elite of the entertainment, sports and music industries. Her unique brand of treating the celebrity psyche has made her the “it” therapist in Hollywood and NY with an undeniably thriving practice. Rosanna Arquette, Andy Dick, Ione Skye, Lea Thompson, Richard Kind, James Denton, David Alan Grier, Greg Grunberg, Monica Potter, Joel Madden, Christopher Lloyd, Jason Lewis, Jonathan Silverman, Jennifer Finnigan, Ahmet Zappa, Trudie Styler, Cindy Margolis and Jeff Goldblum guest star as themselves in this Starz Originals series that the New York Post hails as “unscripted, unusual, funny and real!”

An original half-hour comedy series concocted for the Starz channel, Head Case arrives on DVD with eight episodes from its debut season, along with assorted extras. Alexandra Wentworth stars as therapist Elizabeth Goode, who caters (at a tidy $450 per hour) to a celebrity clientele in (where else) Beverly Hills. The series’ conceit is to turn the whole shrink-patient relationship on its ear. Dr. Goode is a billboard for unprofessional behavior: She insults her patients, asks them outrageously inappropriate questions (“How does it feel to be perceived as a homosexual?” she queries Jason Priestley), gives them terrible advice and later disavows any responsibility for it, discusses her own tumultuous personal life with them, interrupts sessions to take phone calls… In short, she’s a mess. So is everyone around her, including the patient-filching Freudian psychiatrist (played by Steve Landesberg) who shares office space and, to a slightly lesser extent, her wacky assistant (Michelle Arthur); in fact, in this world, it’s the doc and other “civilians” who are neurotic and needy and the stars who have their heads on relatively straight. And there are plenty of stars in this sky, as Rosanna Arquette, Andy Dick, Lea Thompson, Monica Potter, Christopher Lloyd, Trudie Styler, Cindy Margolis, and Jeff Goldblum are just a few of the actors who appear as (and obviously enjoy) themselves.

It’s an amusing premise, and Head Case is often really funny. But the lead character gets annoying, and the show is often so over-the-top as to move beyond what could have been subtle satire into the realm of broad parody. As several users have pointed out, the batch of shorts (ten of them, occupying about two hours) that preceded the series are found on the second of the set’s two discs (i.e., out of chronological order), along with a brief “making of” featurette. They’re a bit weirder (talk about odd pairings: one features bad boy actor Tom Sizemore and former pornstar Tracy Lords, another Ralph Macchio and musician Liz Phair), and arguably more enjoyable, if only because of the 10-to-15-minute running time. --Sam Graham

Stills from Head Case: Season 1 (Click for larger image)